Bill Cosby is back in court — here's what happens if you take the drug he said he obtained for sex

Bill Cosby is back in court in Pennsylvania where
prosecutors will revisit his assault charges,
Reuters reported on
Tuesday.

Cosby has been accused of — but
hasn't admitted to — sexual assault and rape. Last
month, Cosby's lawyers tried to have his criminal case
dismissed on the grounds that he struck a non-prosecution
agreement with a former Montgomery County district attorney
10 years ago. They failed.

Cosby has acknowledged that he obtained drugs to give to
women he wanted to have sex with during the 1960s and
'70s. Back when all of this was happening, so-called
date-rape drugs didn't exist. There were no "roofies" (slang
for Rohypnol), no "easy lay" (slang for GHB, or
gamma-hydroxybutyric acid), no Ketamine.

Yet Cosby
acknowledged that he got seven prescriptions from a Los
Angeles doctor for quaaludes, lab-produced pills that act to
suppress the central nervous system, which slows heart rate and
can make users feel relaxed or sedated.

The drugs, which soared in popularity in the '70s, were taken off
the market in the US in 1983 because they were linked with a
high risk of abuse.

Quaaludes' effects — which can include sleepiness and a sense of
euphoria — are strikingly similar to those of modern date-rape
drugs, including alcohol. (Booze is "the drug most commonly used
to help commit sexual assault," according to the
US Department of Health.)

A brief history of quaaludes

Quaaludes, or methaqualone, were first
produced in labs in India in 1955; the scientists who made
the drug were trying to find a cure for malaria. While the drug
was ineffective against the disease, it appeared to work as a
sedative.
After the drug was patented in 1962, doctors in the UK began
prescribing it to patients who had trouble sleeping; it started
being widely used in the US in the '70s.

As early as the late 1960s, people at dance clubs were using
quaaludes, known then as "disco biscuits." By the '80s, they were
outlawed.

Quaaludes and the brain

Quaaludes are a type of sedative, which work in the brain by
halting the functioning of our "excitatory" messengers, the
ones that typically increase our energy levels, and boosting the
activity of our "inhibitory" messengers, those that usually work
to calm things down.

All at once a warm feeling came rising up my brain stem, as a
pleasant tingling sensation went ricocheting through every
molecule of my body. The phone receiver was still at my ear and
I wanted to tell Bo to have Rocco come pick me up at the
Brookville Country Club, but I couldn't get my lips to move. It
was as if my brain was sending out signals but they were being
intercepted — or scrambled. I felt paralyzed. And I felt
wonderful. I stared at the shiny metal face of the pay phone
and cocked my head to the side, trying to find my own
reflection … How pretty the phone looked! … So shiny it was!

The key important inhibitory messenger that quaaludes act on is
GABA,
short for gamma-aminobutyric acid.

This action is why quaaludes make us drowsy and slow down our
heart rate and breathing. It's also one of the reasons they're so
dangerous — a quaalude overdose can result in coma or even death.
If they're combined with another sedative like alcohol, they
become far more dangerous, and much lower doses of the drug
can kill.